Being a rather precocious youth, I realized as early as the first month of 1961 (I was then just into the first weeks of my 9th year) that I would have a 'Y2K problem'.
No, I didn't foresee problems with my own or others' computer programming (or, as it came to be known later, 'software'); rather I imagined a more personal difficulty.
The neat thing about the year 1961 (to an eight year old) was that the the numeral '1961' read the same upside-down as right-side up (scribble it in on a piece of paper and see). After determining which dates in the past shared that characteristic (1881, 1691, 1001, etc.), I looked forward. It would be quite a while before some date in the future would read the same both ways round in that way - but another future date did catch my attention: the year with the assignation '2000'. This change in the 'thousands column' when assigning numbers to years seemed as interesting to me as the graphic symmetry of the number '1961' - and it would occur within my lifetime. I would turn 47 just 9 days before it happened.
My immediate thought (I remember the sentence as if I had exclaimed it aloud) in response to that calcualtion was, "Too bad I'll be so old!" To an (well, at leat THAT particular) eight year old, '47' seemed an age at which the ability to appreciate even the simple delights of writing dates with this interesting numeral would be seriously diminished.
Well, now it's Y2K+11 - 50 years after that month in which the numbering of years first became of interest to me, and I'm at an age - 58 - which would have seemed positively 'ancient' to that eight-year old kid. I suppose children these days have been having fun with dates like 20.01.2001 and the like (20.02.2002 had a particularly nice symmetry to it). I've never discussed any of these issues - interesting dates, and perceptions of 'the aged' - with an eight-year old child. Perhaps when my sister's first grandchild reaches that age - and I'm well into my 65th year ...
Chris Bruce, still not wearing the bottoms of his trousers rolled, in Kiel, Germany -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
